Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

a couple of years ago I thought it might be a good idea to go to some random websites that offer you fractions of a BTC for watching advertisements. Nothing much at the time, but considering the current development, I did manage to collect a little amount. And there's the problem. The two wallets I tried want to charge ridiculously high fees for the transactions, which would cost me approx. 60-70% of the total amount. After a bit of research I found out, that this is a result of the very small transactions I received during the ad period and it's basically like I was trying to pay everything in pennies. Now even though I know the problem, I still don't know whether and how (if at all) I might be able to work around all this...

Maybe you guys have an idea.

Thanks in advance ;)

Hello & welcome

Indeed, big number of small inputs can make your transaction very expensive.
The way to handle that is to import your private key(s) or seed into a wallet that offers coin control features (Electrum could be a good choice, but make sure you download it from Electrum.org and verify it too (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/))
Then make sure you set 1 satoshi/vByte transaction fee, so you don't pay too much, even if it may take longer until the transaction is confirmed.
And if the fee is still too big, give up on the smallest inputs.

What I recommend is to also read this topic, since it is exactly for your problem, consolidation of the small inputs: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2848987

Thanks for the quick reply,

that sounds like a nice option, but I thought that there's a minimum fee one should use, because otherwise it can happen that the transactions are never confirmed and are lost in the Blockchain.

Kind regards

Welcome Thanks for coming
I will first say do you have a second ID in the forum? I have doubts. Because you registered here in 2017 and this is your first post. If this happens to you, I'll tell you to avoid spam

Yes, there is always a minimum fee, which is 1 satoshi/vByte.
Now, you do have a point, a low fee transaction will probably not be mined if there are better transactions to mine. But these days the mempool is almost empty. Last night (EU) there were mined 1 sat/vByte transactions and yours may as well get mined. See https://mempool.space/ and https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h for details.
Also, if not mined, the transaction will return to you in a few weeks and no fee is charged (so it's not "lost in the blockchain"!), so you can try again when the time is right.

Ah perfect, thanks for that. I wasn't aware of that last part. Thanks a lot. Then I'll try that

No I don't. I tried registering a couple of hours ago and realised my email was already in use. It seems as if I registered here in 2017, when I spent some time looking into BTC but never had the chance of asking something here. No worries, NeuroticFish helped me out already. ;)

If you are sure that you own the private keys and they are safe, leave those currencies where they are, most of them will be lost in transfer fees and therefore you will not benefit from anything.
The value of Bitcoin will constantly increase and therefore you have a good chance of getting a decent amount of money after several years and the development of Bitcoin may reduce transfer fees for transactions with many inputs.

I think consolidating them right now is a better option even if he owns the private key. It is a proven technique and OP will likely need to do it sooner or later or he won't be able to move them with a cheap fee. One of the reasons is because we don't know how the future will be, even if scaling solutions are guaranteed. Better be safe and save some fees right now, instead of being locked by tx fees in the future.

For research and other purposes, may I ask what are those two wallets that you've tried?

For reference, it's over simplification. What actually happen is the transaction is never confirmed and almost all node dropped your transaction (about ~2 weeks after you create and broadcast the transaction). At this point you could either,
1. Rebroadcast the transaction and wait the transaction is mined.
2. Create new transaction.

In addition to consolidating your inputs, there are address types like Segwit, which are customized to attract lower fees than others; it's preferable you consolidate your inputs to to those addresses as it will reduce the cost when you're later transferring those coins to some other address. You may pay a slightly high amount now, but it will save you lots in transaction fees in the future.

I am not sure what kind of wallet you are using I mean if your wallet is custodial then you will have to pay a flat-rate transaction fee but if it is non-custodial then today is the right day to complete your transaction as the Bitcoin transaction fee is very less today. I did a transaction today for only 4sat/byte and it got confirmed within one hour. Next time onwards visit mempool.space before doing any Bitcoin transaction to check the min and max transaction fee.

If OP is legit, it's surely a non-custodial wallet since he won't be able to "try to send using two wallets" to check the fee if it's a custodial wallet.
There's no way to restore a custodial wallet to another custodial wallet so he can send using the other one.

I've also tried to ask which wallets he had tried, but sadly, he didn't respond.
I expected he'd reply with a custodial wallet :3